New Snowden Documents Reveal Secret Memos Expanding Spying. This story was co-published with the New York Times.
Without public notice or debate, the Obama administration has expanded the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international Internet traffic to search for evidence of malicious computer hacking, according to classified NSA documents. In mid-2012, Justice Department lawyers wrote two secret memos permitting the spy agency to begin hunting on Internet cables, without a warrant and on American soil, for data linked to computer intrusions originating abroad — including traffic that flows to suspicious Internet addresses or contains malware, the documents show.
Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany. The National Security Agency has had agents in China, Germany, and South Korea working on programs that use “physical subversion” to infiltrate and compromise networks and devices, according to documents obtained by The Intercept.
The documents, leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, also indicate that the agency has used “under cover” operatives to gain access to sensitive data and systems in the global communications industry, and that these secret agents may have even dealt with American firms. The documents describe a range of clandestine field activities that are among the agency’s “core secrets” when it comes to computer network attacks, details of which are apparently shared with only a small number of officials outside the NSA. “It’s something that many people have been wondering about for a long time,” said Chris Soghoian, principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union, after reviewing the documents.
NSA Said to Exploit Heartbleed Bug for Intelligence for Years. NSA surveillance program reaches ‘into the past’ to retrieve, replay phone calls. The voice interception program, called MYSTIC, began in 2009.
Its RETRO tool, short for “retrospective retrieval,” and related projects reached full capacity against the first target nation in 2011. Planning documents two years later anticipated similar operations elsewhere. A Running List of What We Know the NSA Can Do. So Far. NSA Carves Pathway Into International Computers, New York Times Reports. WASHINGTON, Jan 14 (Reuters) - The U.S.
National Security Agency has put software in almost 100,000 computers around the world allowing it to carry out surveillance on those devices and could provide a digital highway for cyberattacks, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. The NSA has planted most of the software through getting access to computer networks, but has also used a secret technology that allows it entry even to computers not connected to the Internet, the Times said, citing U.S. officials, computer experts and documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
The NSA Is Watching You Masturbate Right Now. YOUR HOME — You are among the millions currently being watched by intelligence analysts at the National Security Agency as you masturbate alone in your room, sources confirmed today.
Documents leaked by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden indicate that at this very moment, your webcam has been activated and has been taken over by NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander, who is watching and judging you as you click on video clip after video clip of hardcore pornography across numerous websites. “Oh, this looks interesting,” sources confirmed Gen. Alexander said from the upper study of his home in Alexandria, Va., as he jimmied his pants down to his ankles. "Disreputable if Not Outright Illegal": The National Security Agency versus Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Art Buchwald, Frank Church, et al.
Washington, D.C., September 25, 2013 – During the height of the Vietnam War protest movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the National Security Agency tapped the overseas communications of selected prominent Americans, most of whom were critics of the war, according to a recently declassified NSA history.
For years those names on the NSA's watch list were secret, but thanks to the decision of an interagency panel, in response to an appeal by the National Security Archive, the NSA has released them for the first time. The names of the NSA's targets are eye-popping. Civil rights leaders Dr. Venona project. The Venona project was a counter-intelligence program initiated by the United States Army Signal Intelligence Service (a forerunner of the National Security Agency) that lasted from 1943 to 1980.[1] The program attempted to decrypt messages sent by Soviet Union intelligence agencies, including its foreign intelligence service and military intelligence services.[2] During the program's four decades, approximately 3,000 messages were at least partially decrypted and translated.[3] The project produced some of the most important breakthroughs for western counter-intelligence in this period, including the discovery of the Cambridge spy ring[4] and the exposure of Soviet espionage targeting the Manhattan Project.[5] The project was one of the most sensitive secrets of United States intelligence.
It remained secret for over a decade after it ended and was not officially declassified until 1995. Background[edit] Most decipherable messages were transmitted and intercepted between 1942 and 1945. Lawsuit Prompts Release Of Some NSA Surveillance Documents. WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has given up more of its surveillance secrets, acknowledging that it was ordered to stop scooping up thousands of Internet communications from Americans with no connection to terrorism – a practice it says was an unintended consequence when it gathered bundles of Internet traffic connected to terror suspects.
One of the documents that intelligence officials released Wednesday came because a court ordered the National Security Agency to do so. Michael Hayden talks to CNN about XKEYSCORE program. Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images Does the NSA really operate a vast database that allows its analysts to sift through millions of records showing nearly everything a user does on the Internet, as was recently reported?
Yes, and people should stop worrying and learn to love it, according former NSA chief Gen. Bush-Cheney began illegal NSA spying before 9/11, says telcom CEO. Contradicting a statement by ex-vice president Dick Cheney on Sunday that warrantless domestic surveillance might have prevented 9/11, 2007 court records indicate that the Bush-Cheney administration began such surveillance at least 7 months prior to 9/11.
The Bush administration bypassed the law requiring such actions to be authorized by FISA court warrants, the body set up in the Seventies to oversee Executive Branch spying powers after abuses by Richard Nixon. Former QWest CEO John Nacchios said that at a meeting with the NSA on February 27, 2001, he and other QWest officials declined to participate. James Clapper is still lying to America. “James Clapper Is Still Lying”: That would be a more honest headline for yesterday’s big Washington Post article about the director of national intelligence’s letter to the U.S. Senate. Clapper, you may recall, unequivocally said “no, sir” in response to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asking him: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper’s response was shown to be a lie by Snowden’s disclosures, as well as by reports from the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Associated Press and Bloomberg News (among others).
This is particularly significant, considering lying before Congress prevents the legislative branch from performing oversight and is therefore a felony. Upon Snowden’s disclosures, Clapper initially explained his lie by insisting that his answer was carefully and deliberately calculated to be the “least untruthful” response to a question about classified information. Now the government’s cracking down on privacy tools! Use privacy tools, go directly to jail. OK, that’s not exactly the bombshell revealed by Thursday’s installment of leaked NSA documents, but the truth is close enough for serious discomfort. According to the documents, using privacy tools that encrypt your communications and hide your identity is like waving a red flag in front of the surveillance state bull.
Within minutes of the release of two new documents describing the NSA’s policies on what communications data can be gathered without a warrant, privacy geeks seized upon one particular passage: In the context of a cryptanalytic effort, maintenance of technical data bases requires retention of all communications that are enciphered or reasonably believed to contain secret meaning, and sufficient duration may consist of any period of time during which encrypted material is subject to, or of use in, cryptanalysis…. So any encrypted U.S. person communications, once acquired, can be retained indefinitely pending decrypt. PRISM and the Rise of a New Fascism.
In his book Propaganda, published in 1928, Edward Bernays wrote: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Obama: NSA surveillance has saved lives. NSA Snooping Matters, Even If You Have 'Nothing to Hide' “I have nothing to hide. Why should I care if the NSA is vacuuming up my phone records?” The news that the NSA has been indiscriminately collecting the phone and Internet logs of Americans under sweeping Patriot Act orders has provoked outrage from civil libertarians — and even Patriot Act author Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI).
But there are also plenty of quieter voices wondering why law-abiding citizens should be concerned about bulk data collection if there’s even an off-chance it might help stop a terrorist attack. A Reply to Epstein & Pilon on NSA's Metadata Program. Last week, my colleague Roger Pilon and Prof. Richard Epstein co-wrote a Chicago Tribune op-ed defending the National Security Agency’s bulk metadata collection program. I had not, initially, intended to respond directly: Cato scholars often disagree among themselves—as Roger and I long have in this area—and normally it suffices for us each to state our own affirmative arguments and let readers decide for themselves which is most convincing. Five major takeaways from Edward Snowden Q&A.
Former defense contractor and NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden answered questions from the Internet on the Guardian’s website earlier today. Is Naomi Wolf working for the NSA? I hate to do this, but I feel obligated to share, as the story unfolds, my creeping concern that the writer Naomi Wolf is not whom she purports to be, and that her motive in writing an article on her public Facebook page speculating about whether National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden might actually be still working for the NSA, could be to support the government’s effort to destroy him.
After all, with Snowden under vicious attack by both the government and the corporate media, being wrongly accused of treason, or portrayed as a drop-out slacker, a narcissist, a loser hoping to gain fame and even a “cross-dressing” weirdo, what defender of liberty would pile on with publication of a work of absolutely fact-free speculation as to whether he might also be a kind of “double agent” put out there by the NSA in order to discourage real potential whistleblowers from even considering leaking information about government spying on Americans.
Is the Snowden Case Headed for a Plea Deal? I’m guessing that there is more to Edward Snowden’s choice of Hong Kong instead of Iceland as an intial refuge than a matter of dim sum over skyr, hangikjöt, kleinur,laufabrauð, and bollur. At the very least, Snowden can keep the global media pot boiling with interviews to the avid Hong Kong media about exciting China-related hacking secrets, thereby raising his profile and improving his chances of receiving genuine due process from the courts in Hong Kong and the United States. Following NSA Leak, Droves Of Domestic Terrorists Switch To AT&T, T-Mobile. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. PRISM software works just like Facebook ads. NSA surveillance didn’t lead to capture of deadly terrorist. No one understands what treason is.
The word “treason” has been thrown around a lot lately in relation to alleged leakers Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning, but it turns out that no one accusing them of the crime actually seems to understands what it means. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein called Snowden’s leak an “act of treason,” as did Florida Democratic Sen. Get My FBI File. NSA Assures Americans That PRISM 2.0 Will Be Way More Invasive. John Oliver Slams Republicans for Reactions to NSA Surveillance. ECHELON. ECHELON[needs IPA], originally a code-name, is now used in global media and in popular culture to describe a signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection and analysis network operated on behalf of the five signatory nations to the UKUSA Security Agreement[1] — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Ted Rall's Prescient Take On Verizon And The NSA.
Several months ago employees of Verizon, the company that enjoys a monopoly on local telephone service where I live, confirmed that my telephone has been tapped by the government. Terrorist Living In U.S. Gets Why NSA Spying Such A Complicated Issue. NYC Bomb Plot Details Settle Little In NSA Debate. Pundits vs. Edward Snowden. James Clapper: I Gave 'Least Untruthful' Answer Possible On NSA Surveillance. Boehner on Snowden: “He’s a traitor” Wiretaps through Software Hacks to Get Legal Scrutiny. Fox News' Ralph Peters: 'Bring Back The Death Penalty' For Edward Snowden. Jay Carney Refuses To Discuss Edward Snowden, But Says Obama Is Open To 'Debate' PRISM Program: Obama Administration Held 22 Briefings For Congress On Key FISA Law. The NSA Black Hole: 5 Basic Things We Still Don’t Know About the Agency’s Snooping. What spying apologists don’t tell you about “thwarted plots”
Glenn Greenwald Challenges The Media's NSA Leaks Talking Points On MSNBC. U.S. Operating Massive Online Spying Program. Edward Snowden: Why did the NSA whistleblower have access to PRISM and other sensitive systems? The NSA leaks' big reveal; The scariest part of it all; Was China a good idea for Snowden? An Afghan attack, foiled; The Pentagon's pals in Russia; John Allen to Brookings; And a little bit more.
Secrecy News - from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy. Edward Snowden NSA: Guardian Reveals Identity Of Whistleblower Behind NSA Revelations. The Onion's Coverage Of Internet Privacy. '4 Intelligence Officials' Allegedly Joke Of 'Disappearing' NSA Leaker, Reporter (UPDATED) Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data. My Story And I'm Sticking To It: A PRISM of uncertainty.